Liz d’Eon joins the team to deepen Renegade’s R&D bench, support new product development, and help scale pilot production of its PVC-free coated textile.
Liz d’Eon’s first week at Renegade didn’t look like a typical first week. It looked like a build. While most new hires are finding the coffee machine, Liz was in our new Denver lab getting hands-on with pilot production and learning the line inside out. That’s the job, and it’s exactly who she is.
Liz joins Renegade as Associate R&D Manager, a role built around a simple truth: a better material is never finished. It has to be developed, tested, and improved, then manufactured consistently at volume without losing what made it better in the first place. That gap, between a promising formulation and a product that performs the same on the thousandth yard as the first, is where most materials companies stall. Liz has spent her career making it a reality.
She studied chemistry at Cornell, graduating magna cum laude with research in polymer science. At DuPont Electronics & Industrial, she formulated and characterized dielectrics for the semiconductor industry, one of the most demanding materials environments on earth, learning how rigorous R&D, accelerated aging, and reliability testing actually work at a global manufacturer. Then she went the other direction, to Form Energy, a fast-scaling startup building grid-scale batteries. There she worked on a roll-to-roll electrode material with web handling and coating steps that look a lot like how coated fabric is made, qualifying materials and helping transfer processes from bench to pilot line. One example says it all: a quality test that took four hours in a water tank, she redesigned down to roughly two minutes.
That range is rare. Liz has done standards-driven R&D at a global manufacturer and fast, resourceful scale-up at a startup. She knows how to move quickly without breaking quality, and how to build the systems that let a young company grow up. She chose Renegade after a year of reflection and travel sharpened a simple goal: she wanted the materials she works on to make the world better. A real product, a real market problem, and polymer science she knows intimately, at exactly the growth stage she loves.
What This Means for Renegade Customers
Fabricators and brands don’t just want a material. They want confidence that the company behind it can support them, improve the product, and back its claims with data. That’s where Liz makes the difference:
- An innovation lab open to customers. Our Denver lab and pilot line let customers co-create fabric with us. Send us your material and we can run preliminary testing in-house, giving you early answers before you spend thousands on a third-party lab.
- Real R&D on new variations. Renegade’s coated textile is a platform, not a single SKU. Liz is a driving force in developing new variations, working alongside our Head of Product and Sustainability, resin suppliers, and extrusion partners, including the recycling and adhesion challenges that push the whole category forward.
- Quality and certifications you can trust. Liz is hands-on in the mechanical (grab, tear, tensile, puncture, abrasion) and weathering testing behind our quality plan, and supports the sustainability certifications like OEKO-TEX that get Renegade PP approved at the largest brands.
She joins a technical team led by Head of Product and Sustainability Katie Kolesar, who holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and rounded out by a Director of Sales and Technical Solutions Scott Coon with 30 years of hands-on fabrication experience. Add a materials scientist who has taken products from bench to production in two industries, and the team behind Renegade’s PVC-free coated textile, roughly 30-40% lighter than PVC at comparable strength, PFAS-free, mono-material that’s able to be recycled, gets even deeper.
Connect with Liz
If you’re exploring PVC-free coated fabrics, or you’re curious about co-creating and testing fabric in our Denver innovation lab, Liz and the R&D team want to hear from you. Send a note to Liz@RenegadePlastics.com
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